Dubai: Malek Jaziri, Arab world’s biggest tennis star at the moment, will be in China next week trying to build up on the positives that he drew during the course of a sensational campaign at the Dubai Duty Free Men’s Open that concluded on Saturday.
Jaziri stumbled in his semi-final against third seed Roberto Bautista Agut and missed out on joining Morocco’s Younus El Aynaoui in becoming the second Arab in the men’s singles final. But his efforts were certainly not in vain as Jaziri is certain of breaking into the top-100 now, perhaps even as close to No. 80, when the fresh weekly ATP Rankings are announced on Monday.
The Tunisian struck a purple patch during the Dubai tournament, powering his way to the last four with scalps that included top seed and world No. 4 Grigor Dimitrov in the opening round, followed by another stunning three-set win against higher-ranked Robin Haase in Round Two. The 34-year-old Tunisian then rode on a third successive showing to send promising teen Stefanos Tsitsipas packing, also in three sets in an entertaining quarter-finals, on Thursday.
Despite his loss and failure to at least match the feat of Moroccan El Aynaoui, Jaziri had a lot of positives to carry away. “Like I said, this result gives me confidence to play a bit more relaxed now. One of the things I know is that I will be in the main draw of Grand Slams and I will have far more opportunities now than before this week,” Jaziri told media after his disappointment late on Friday.
“Even at other big ATP events like entry at the Barcelona Open [April 21-29] or even at the Monte-Carlo Masters [April 14-22] now seem more realistic for me. Maybe if I play a few weeks better like this week, then I have a much better chance and a good opportunity to get some more points. If everything goes well as per plans, then there are only positives that I can take away from here,” he added.
Coming into this event, Jaziri’s best was a quarter-final at the 2015 tournament where he lost in straight sets to Germany’s Philipp Kohlschreiber. The best from any Arab player still is El Ayanoui’s loss in three sets 6-4, 3-6, 3-6 to Frenchman Fabrice Santoro.
His next destination is a $75,000 Challenger tournament on the ATP Challenger Tour starting in Zhuhai from March 4. “I didn’t expect to play here like this. I was playing every day, fighting every day. It was tough at the beginning of the year. So I decided to play some Challengers so that I could play more matches and gain more confidence and feel good on court. I didn’t play a lot of matches, so I didn’t win a lot of matches at the beginning of the year as well,” he said.
“But now, I still need more matches and so I decided with my team to play more for points and that’s the reason we will go to China and fight it there,” Jaziri added.
